The incorporation of location and navigation technology, such as global positioning system (GPS) technology into mobile phones and similar wireless portable devices has created a class of “location-aware” devices that allow users to communicate with other users as well as determine or even view the location of other users on their own device. Such devices may be configured to display a regional map and the location of other users and/or places of interest on their device. This greatly enhances the social networking capability of such devices, beyond simple voice or text-based communication by allowing users to quickly find friends and associates and coordinate activities based on respective locations.
The incorporation of location display capability presents unique opportunities in the transmission of advertising and other types of supplemental messages in conjunction with data content that may be downloaded during the course of a user's interaction with a mobile application. Various characteristics of the user that may be relevant to the creation and transmission of targeted ad messages can be leveraged to enhance the effectiveness of ad campaigns created by advertisers and merchants. One such set of characteristics includes the user profile data that is often provided to the mobile application providers. A significant characteristic includes the location information inherent in the location-aware mobile device, as well as time of use. The location and time information can be used by an advertiser to create and transmit ad messages that are specifically tailored for a particular location and that are transmitted at the most opportune times. In general, present methods of serving ad messages to mobile devices are based on relatively primitive techniques of transmitting identical messages to all users of a particular service or network, or relying on ad serving methods within existing applications, such as mobile web browsers or e-mail applications.